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Sunday, 13 January 2013

Koming to Kampala: part 1

Yesterday,
in a fit of irony, we spent nearly eight hours searching for a map of the city
in which we were searching. We
eventually found that guide, and in the process we found ourselves.

No really though, after the first few hours we realized that
we’d somehow ended up exactly where we’d started, and I thought “Whoo-Hoo! We
found ourselves!” Not that it was ever
too hairy or worrisome, but wandering (even aimful wandering) can start to get
a little unnerving in a city as fast and (traffic-)lawless as downtown Kampala. Just as our nerves started to fry in the
rather disdainful afternoon sun we were sent a gift not from the mid-latitudinal
heavens, but instead from the enterprisingly friendly people of Kampala: a man
from a travel agency we had just left—empty-handed—tracked us down from four
blocks away (I think he navigated by the glow of Alex’s sunburn) to say that he
had uncovered a map that previously hadn’t existed in file drawers we hadn’t
seen, and that we should come “have it.”
After a touch of bargaining our quest was complete, finalized in the way
it seems most things are completed here in the capital of Uganda—with a real
big smile on your face, and a guarded promise to come back for further
business.

Rewind two days, as a pair of 747s and a 737 (which should
really be named, like, a 22.5 [maximum] compared to the ’47) hauled one
scrunched-up and unsmiling dude some twos of thousands of miles (some 3.2s of
thousands of kilometers) from O’Hare to Entebbe International Airport. After thirty hours packed into tubes of
recycled air I didn’t feel nearly as much like a V.I.P. as I assumed I would
when I met the Ugandan man outside of the baggage claim who was holding a sign with my name on it. That said name was written all-caps in teal
Magic Marker did not help. Though, now
that I think about it, Bowie probably had a lot of signs written specifically
in teal Magic Marker…

Before my dreams of superstardom were erased, my distinctly
underwhelming self-esteem at the moment had already been reduced by an encounter
in Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta airport not an hour prior, which constituted my
first in-depth conversation with an African on their home turf. Hoping beyond hope that airport regulations
would be somewhat more lax outside of the world’s biggest target (sorry
‘Murica, but you aren't the best at making friends some times), I had left my water bottles
full between exiting the flight from Amsterdam and entering the final leg to
Entebbe. I was pulled back from those liquid
realms beyond hope by a salty young Kenyan security guard who gave me a dashing
smile and pointed at my Nalgenes. Darn. I chugged what I could, chucked the rest,
showed him the empty bottles, and was about to head into the waiting area when
he stopped me.

“How many of these do you drink a day?” he asked, motioning
at my twin vessels. He was small and thin, dressed in shabby work clothes. The concept of two full liters of water must have amused him, as many of his fellow Kenyans still live a long ways from regular clean water sources (regular of course being relative in this case).

Unfortunately, I hadn't really thought of all that when I replied, with a well-hydrated swagger,

“About four or five.”

“Oh. Sometimes I get to drink up to three glasses.”

Oh, right. Well-hydrated shame.

Walking away silently with head hung, I vowed to never let another drop
of water pass my lips. I succeeded for
the entire next flight, causing a dry-air dehydration that constituted the third reason I was distinctly down on
life when I entered my name-card-carrier’s taxi at 11:30 p.m. in the velvet-thick
night of Uganda’s loftiest point of entry.